“Justice is clearly trying every way it can to see whether Monsanto is exceeding its rights under the patent,” said James Weiss, a Washington-based attorney at K&L Gates LLP who helped defend Microsoft Corp. against a federal antitrust probe. “At the end of the day, they may not be able to do much with it because of the scope of those patents. In almost all the cases, the courts come out on the side of intellectual property.”

Yet Monsanto’s seeds are so ubiquitous that they have become like AT&T’s telephone lines before the company’s 1984 breakup or Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating system in the 1990s, said James P. Denvir, an attorney who represents rival seedmaker DuPont Co. and led the government’s AT&T case.

[...]

Monsanto’s attorney, Dan Webb, defended Microsoft in 2002 against government antitrust claims. A former U.S. Attorney in Chicago, he also prosecuted Admiral John Poindexter in the Iran- Contra affair.

How can anyone defend such a disgusting company that deserves to have some of its executives put in prison for what they have done over the years (it’s not just monopoly abuse but also many deaths and baseless lawsuits/extortions)? It’s like representing OJ Simpson. For some details about Monsanto, see past writings such as:

The following new press release shows the World Bank and the Gates Foundation in tandem. We saw this before.

CGAP, an independent microfinance center based at the World Bank, today announced a new partnership with the UK Department for International Development (DFID) to expand ongoing global efforts to use information and communication technologies (ICT), especially mobile phones, to increase access to basic financial services for the poor. In addition to a 2006 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and CGAP funding, DFID will provide GBP 8 million to the CGAP Technology Program.

Microsoft set up the company’s first office in Nigeria in 2000 with just three workers. Ten years later, there are two established offices situated in Abuja and Lagos, with a network of over 1,000 Microsoft partners, actively contributing to ICT and the broader Nigerian economy.

For reasons that we demonstrated before, the activities of the Gates Foundation are tied to Microsoft’s. There is some more news coverage from Africa that reveals the influence the Gates Foundation in the black continent [1, 2]. Africa is a testing ground for many of the experimental drugs and the seeds that Gates invests billions of dollars in. According to three new essays [1, 2, 3] that are based on TED, the Gates camp wants to reduce the world’s population using patents (vaccines). It’s something that they invest in, so there is profit to be made in the process.

Also in Africa — Gates has investments with the Rockefellers, both of whom invest in what they call “Green Revolution”. It’s about the West’s control of Africa, under the guise of “saving lives”. Rockefeller is a thuggish family that’s now compared to Gates for all the PR it did after the crimes:

I think Apple, or Steve Jobs personally, could follow in the footsteps of some of the country’s previous billionaires. Take after people like Andrew Carnegie who helped build libraries, J. D. Rockefeller who founded schools like the University of Chicago, or even modern day philanthropist (and former Microsoft CEO) Bill Gates who started the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which gives computers to schools and libraries.

“Behind every great fortune there is a crime,” said Honour de Balzac. This often proves to be true provided one digs deep enough, reaching underneath the PR blanket.

In the text above we find the “schools and libraries” fairy tale that Gates’ PR people sell to the public. What software do these computers run? What does Gates receive in return for these ‘donations’? Earlier this month we explained what Microsoft was doing in the Museum of Science in Boston. It’s usually more or less the same plot. Gates wants to serve as a sort of shadow minister of education [1, 2, 3, 4] and in order to serve his agenda, the foundation has just launched some self-serving poll which got covered in:

These are some of the results from a survey of 40,000 public teachers across the United States asked to give their input for a report on schools. The results were compiled in a study called Primary Sources: America’s Teachers on America’s Schools, released this month by Scholastic Inc. and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Can anyone not see what the Gates family does here? They will tell teachers what to think by influencing information in the form of results which they paid for. The conclusion is that there is a need to change education to suit Gates’ ideals and it’s already having an impact, based on this news report:

Hillsborough County teachers will soon get their first glimpse of a new evaluation system that will help determine whether they earn tenure or merit pay.

The School Board is due to vote today on an $360,000 online training course for the evaluation system that the district has adopted as part of its reforms with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Watch more carefully the part which says “adopted as part of its reforms with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.”

Google has been putting together their University Roadshow to tell school IT departments about their college-oriented services. Microsoft is doing the same for their Live@edu program. As you might expect, each offering plays to the existing strengths of the current public offerings; there’s a lot more evolution than revolution here.

The School Board on Tuesday unanimously approved the move as part of a reform effort under way to improve schools through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

What does the Gates family have to do with the School Board? These are just influence games gone wrong.

According to this report, the Gates band is preparing more ‘studies’ that will certainly serve its agenda afterwards. Those ‘studies’ come from institutes that Gates pays to do this.

The UO-affiliated EPIC’s primary use of the Gates Foundation funding, Conley said, will be for a validity study that will explore the relationship between existing college- and career-readiness standards and the content, expectations and practices most used in entry-level college courses. The study will look at courses in both four-year baccalaureate programs and two-year certificate programs that prepare students for career paths.

Stan Jones, Indiana’s former commissioner for higher education, is leading the effort with about $12 million in startup money from several national nonprofits including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Stan Jones, Indiana’s former commissioner for higher education, is leading the effort with funds from several national nonprofits, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Jones started “Complete College America,” a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit last year.

This is a fiasco. To privatise education in the sense that people or corporations can take over schools would never be acceptable (that’s not quite what the article is about though). Education run by companies is education that turns into training. It’s more like an army regimen.

At the heart of the initiative in Pittsburgh — which is one of four school districts around the country that received funding from the Gates Foundation — is the challenge facing the American education system at the K-12 level, officials said.

And in Memphis too. Is there any school that Gates is not preying on for influence (and consequently returns)?

Even the American Council on Education seems to have gotten Gates injected into it, based on this new report:

For colleges to succeed at graduating more students, institutions will have to embrace “transformational change,” and if they do, they may get some help from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. That was the message from Hilary Pennington, who directs the foundation’s efforts in higher education, in a talk Monday to college presidents gathered at the annual meeting here of the American Council on Education.

Rather than 100% student proficiency, the new proposal would have as its goal “college readiness” (as taken from the current emphasis of the Gates Foundation.) Schools and teachers would be evaluated on the basis of test score gains rather than absolute standards.

More school agenda and more Gates Foundation. There is nothing they won’t touch. It’s pretty much the same when it comes to pharmaceutical giants.

Gates and others are pressuring the governments to pay up (at taxpayers’ expense) to pharmaceuticals which Gates has shares in. We have already shown how the Gates family generally travels around the world and pressures governments to pay more to companies that have patents on life. Gates insists on it and daemonises those who disagree. It means more profit to him.

Watch how the Clintons are being used by Gates. From the news we have:

This is not as innocent as it may seem. Gates is also using the Clintons for backup as he will pocket some of the said money because he invests in the companies that receive this money. He is their big shareholder. This is the equivalent of Bill Gates asking the governments to spend more money on software or the oil lobby asking the government to increase fuel consumption. It’s demonstrably the case.

“Bill Gates acts like a politicians and intrudes public policy.”One can find Gates sitting next to Clinton in these photo [1, 2, 3] that accompany many more articles [1, 2].

Bill Gates acts like a politicians and intrudes public policy. Hasn’t anyone learned anything from the Gates-Abramoff visas blunder? Gates works for Gates, not for the United States. It’s not hard to understand or to see that.

The Gates Foundation enjoys an incestuous relationship with the UN (covered along with examples many times since 2008). There are too many conflicts of interests and it’s no surprise that the UN is giving an awardto Gates (it’s like the mutual flattery ceremony, where rich people exchange medals with one another, as a form of reputation-masturbation). One of the worst monopolists (and criminals) of the 20th century is now collecting awards (he’s a racketeer, a bit like the mafia) . It’s a similar thing in South Africa, which proves that aggressive PR campaigns pay off. Most people would find criticism of Gates objectionable because of PR.

March 10 brings more cheering. Women from Seattle to South Africa can shout-out for Melinda Gates, Gates Foundation honcho and champion of dramatic improvements in health and education.

Charities need our support

[...]

Looking at some on the larger charities such as the Gates Foundation, we can see that money needed by the less fortunate in the USA is going overseas. At their website, it states that over $20 billion was given since 1994. Unfortunately only about ¼ was given to programs in the United States. I commend the Foundation for its generosity; but what about the homeless and staving in our country.

That’s nonsense. These numbers are fake. When Gates ‘pays’ billions he usually pays with patents and licences (artificial scarcity and imaginary property). We explained this point before. Microsoft uses the same tricks (spin) when it claims “donations” and “compensation” but actually gives licences to run binaries such as Windows and Office (for a limited time).

All in all, the new examples above (collected over a one-week period alone) show that investments in PR have high returns. For returns on investment, one needs to fool the press by repeating the lies over and over again. Truth tellers suddenly seem suspicious and they cannot do enough to stop a colonisation and expansion of power that takes over our children’s schooling.

This is only the second time since 2001 that the top two spots were not held by the dynamic duo of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Instead, the Microsoft(MSFT) founder, who saw his net wealth increase by $13 billion last year, had to settle for second place, while Buffett, who saw his fortune increase by $10 billion thanks to his impressive bets on firms like Goldman Sachs(GS) and BYD, placed third.

Yes, if one reads this correctly, Gates has made $13 billion in the past year. Yet he claims to be giving his money away, doesn’t he? He is just an investor looking after his own power, which is related to wealth. Reputation laundering is a scary phenomenon. █

“The common wisdom is that the person to worry about the most right now is Gates…. I think we’ve got to be careful.”

–Disney CEO Michael Eisner

“Some weeks it looks like Redmond feels entitled to capture not just part of what we save, but all of it. That just isn’t going to fly with corporate America forever. When your margins are more sensitive to Bill Gates’ pricing whims than they are the price of oil, that’s an untenable position for a large company to be in.”

–John Chapman Sr., BP Amoco Technology Executive

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Microsoft's charm offensives against Free/libre software are proving to be rather effective, despite them involving a gross distortion of facts and exploitation of corruptible elements in the corporate media

A British MEP criticises Battistelli and the management of the European Patent Office (EPO) while Baroness Lucy Neville-Rolfe, UK Minister for Intellectual Property, gets closer to Battistelli in a tactless effort to improve relations